Bill Brown (critical theory)

Bill Brown is a professor of English at the University of Chicago. He occupies the named chair previously held by Wayne Booth and is currently chair of the University's English Department. His work focuses on American literature, with his second book, "A Sense of Things", looking at the representation of objects in 19th century American literature. His interests have since progressed to modernism. He also has a long-standing interest in popular culture, and has written about "Toy Story" and Westerns, among other facets of American life.

His major theoretical work is on Thing theory, which borrows from Heidegger's object/thing distinction to look the role of objects that have become manifest in a way that sets them apart from the world in which they exist. He edited a special issue of "Critical Inquiry" on this subject, which won awards for best special issue of an academic journal in 2001.

Published Works

*"A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature" (2003)
*"Things," a special issue of Critical Inquiry (Fall 2001)
*"How To Do Things With Things-A Toy Story," in "Critical Inquiry" (Summer 1998)
*"Reading the West: An Anthology of Dime Novels" (1997)
*"The Material Unconscious: American Amusement, Stephen Crane, and the Economies of Play" (1996)

External links

* [http://english.uchicago.edu/graduate/amer/brown.html Webpage on University of Chicago website]
* [http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v24/v24n4.brown.html Excerpt from "How to Do Things with Things (A Toy Story)", Summer 1998]

Bill Brown also likes street lights, asphalt and manikins at shopping centers.